In Mödling, a small town near Vienna, girls between the ages of 18 and 20 have been disappearing without a trace at ever shorter intervals for the past 13 years. Residents are worried and accuse the police of incompetence. In this environment of fear and mistrust, the 19-year-old schoolgirl Jeanny meets the mysterious but charming tax consultant Johannes, which initially has something threatening about it. But Johannes sees more in Jeanny than just an innocent girl. And he gives Jeanny, who lost her father at a young age, support and recognition. He helps her to pass the Matura, he awakens her self-confidence and gives her the appreciation that she misses. An unusual love grows between the two, which is initially kept secret from everyone. As she is drawn deeper and deeper into the whirl of her feelings, the aggressive climate in the town continues to escalate. A militia is formed. Jeanny is becoming increasingly insecure. Can she really trust Johannes?

In the middle of the mountain wilderness of the Alps, a glowing meteorite strikes a glacier and brings a Neanderthal boy frozen in ice back to life. This boy, Bataa, meets Sophie, a girl who has run away from a vacation cabin in the mountains. At first, the two seem separated by language and time, but they quickly discover they have things in common: Sophie has lost her mother and cannot find her place in her new blended family, and Bataa also feels abandoned and longs for his family.

The Alps, late 19th century. Greider, a mysterious lone rider who claims to be a photographer, arrives at an isolated lumber village, despotically ruled by a family clan, asking for winter accommodation.

Lower Austria in the 80s. Anna helps out in her uncle's tavern to fund her studies and meets handsome Kurt who casts an eye on her. But when the local factory closes, life in the valley changes. Anna learns that Kurt is going to marry. Then a terrible accident occurs. The film conveys the rural society's changing self-conception and outlines the conflict between staying or leaving for the city.

Medical student Paula wins a place at an exclusive Heidelberg medical school. When the body of a young man she met on the train turns up on her dissection table, she begins to investigate the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death.

One of the main theses of the Marienthal study was that prolonged unemployment leads to a state of apathy in which the victims do not utilize any longer even the few opportunities left to them. The vicious cycle between reduced opportunities and reduced level of aspiration has remained the focus of all subsequent discussions.

Rosa, a young and self-confident woman, used to live a happy life in a small valley in the Alps, but after the second world war broke out, everything changed.

A brown bear in the wild causes a sensation as a border crosser between Tyrol and Bavaria. Because Master Petz snatches many a lamb, repeatedly plunders beehives and prefers to visit garden inns to feast on the food and drink (including a pint) of the escaped guests, the alarmed people demand that the beast be shot down. After some initial bickering, this unpopular decision is also accepted at a political level, with Bavarians and Tyroleans alike hoping that the execution will be carried out by their neighbor.

After a stroke of fate, star lawyer Mark Degen completely turns his life around. The workaholic, who only took on lucrative cases, becomes a courageous lawyer with social commitment. When his daughter, public prosecutor Ricarda, loses her first case against a corrupt hospital doctor in which the key witness and evidence have obviously been tampered with, Mark suddenly finds himself in a new line of work: as a "detective against his will", he embarks on a search for clues to help Ricarda. The investigation not only brings movement to the deadlocked criminal case, but also to the difficult relationship between father and daughter.

Nana Iaschwili, a teacher from East Europe, wants to emigrate to America to start a new life. After landing in Vienna, the authorities notice her falsified visa and arrest her. Nana, threatened with deportation, would prefer anything except being sent back and escapes. She must keep on the move constantly. The police are hot on her trail. Together with other illegal aliens, Nana, alias "Suzie Washington", flees to the so-called "green border", the no-man's-land between East and West. The police, cows and lonely men keep getting in her way.